Monday, March 18, 2013

Are Republicans finished with humans?

According to this new report, the Republican National Committee has decided that it needs to learn how to reach out to youth, minorities and women.

Yes, learn how to reach out to them. Because they’re aliens, apparently, what with their weird languages and seamless spacecrafts and mysterious hand-feet that can vaporize normal humans with a lethal ray of ESP toe-thought.

But hold on.

It’s too easy to blast the GOP for being out of touch with today’s diverse society. Before learning of this report, I was preparing a blog on how the right often refers to Democrats “fooling” or “snookering” their base — a testament to Republican arrogance and bigotry.

What the report shows is that the party’s problem is actually far broader. It’s not just that it can’t relate to youth, minorities and women; it no longer relates to humans at all.

Check out these choice, juicy quotes pulled from the GOP plan by AlterNet’s Bill Scher to see what I mean:

“Establish an RNC Celebrity Task Force of personalities in the entertainment industry … as a way to attract younger voters.”

“Women need to hear what our motive is — why it is that we want to create a better future for our families and how our policies will affect the lives of their loved ones.”

“Instead of connecting with voters’ concerns, we too often sound like bookkeepers. We need to do a better job connecting people to our policies.”

“We can’t expect to address these demographic groups if we know nothing about them.”

“Our candidates and office holders need to do a better job talking in normal, people-oriented terms.”

Don’t you just feel the love?

The GOP’s objective is not to keep up with the times, but to find more creative ways to sell the same old dung (to an audience with which it shares a mutual loathing, no less). The party’s top-down strategy employs buzzwords in its quest to reach desired demographics by appealing to what they think those groups are like based on market research (meaning stereotypes). If that last sentence made you comatose, then you’ve tasted what the Republicans are cooking — it’s as if they’re the squids from Galaxy Quest, sewed up in human suits and trying desperately to figure out earthling emotions and those crazy “people-oriented terms.”

Mitt Romney’s nomination suddenly makes a lot more sense.

At this point, the Republican Party could exist entirely without carbon-based life forms, humming along in corporate presentations across the U.S. The GOP, once the party of Lincoln and more recently the party of the rich white male, is now the party of the quarterly report.